LCW – Losing Control of the Web? 

Most of the population of Turkey supports the military operation against the PKK in northern İraq but as with all military operations there is always unexpected collateral damage. The fall out on this occasion has hit Turkish clothing firm LC Waikiki. For around a month the internet has been awash with rumours that LCW has been sold to Leyla Zana. The result of the cyber gossip has been a fourfold increase in visits to their website, the number of visitors spiralled from 60,000 a month to 280,000 in five days. On the face of it that sounds like good news but not if it is coupled with a 15% drop in sales revenue.  

What makes the association with Leyla Zana so detrimental for business? She is Turkey’s most infamous Kurdish woman and the first ever Kurdish woman to have taken a seat as an MP in Parliament. She outraged popular opinion in 1991 when she took her oath as an MP by starting it in Turkish but finishing it in Kurdish. İn 1994 she was charged with treason and being a member of the PKK and imprisoned for a decade. She became a special case for Amnesty İnternational and was recognised as a Prisoner of Conscience making her even more persona non grata amongst the general populace. Her book ‘Writings from Prison’ won much international acclaim but aroused little national sympathy.   

Finally released in 2004 she is presently being investigated to see whether she recently referred to the incarcerated head of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, as a ‘leader’ and she played a key role in establishing the DTP party underwhich umbrella group Turkey’s current clutch of Kurdish MPs were elected. One of her most controversial idea a proposal to reorganize Turkey into a set of federal states, one of them being Kurdistan. For most Turks this kind of seperatist idea makes her an undesirable pariah. According to the electronic whispering campaign Zana now owned LCW and the money made from the products was being directed to the Kurdish seperatist group, the PKK. The messages elaborated on the theme saying that any time someone bought a garment they were paying for a bullet that was being shot back into the heart of the Turkish nation.  

As of the 7th of November TEMA Mağazacılık (the parent company of LCW) began to fight back. To counter the slanderous claims they bought advertising space on MSN Messenger to broadcast to its’ millions of users that no part of their company is owned by Ms Zana. On every Turkish users personal page the slogan now appears ‘LC Waikiki reveals the truth behind the false allegations’. 

İn fact the company are still at a loss to know how the rumours came about, Assistant General Manager Murat Mısırlı explains; ‘At a time when national feeling is running so high we still haven’t managed to find out who put these allegations into the public sphere. Our security team is working on it and we are running an active investigation. At the same time we are trying to explain to the public the reality of LC Waikiki and TEMA. Perhaps it was a competitor or a disgruntled ex-employee.....there are plenty of people who can’t stomach our success.’  

The company have the support of the Turkish Exporters Union, the İstanbul Chamber of Commerce and the Union of United Brands and have taken the measure of expanding their website to include a page showing all the partners of their companies and that they are a wholly Turkish owned enterprise. They have also added a video explaining that someone somewhere is trying to ruin the company’s good reputation and throw a shadow over their success.  

Mısırlı is keen to underline the fact that apart from a small share owned by the company’s original founder Frenchman Mr Georgeos Amouyal the controlling interests (97%) are the Dizdar, Küçük and Kısacık families and have been for years. He says; ‘We have no commercial relationship with Leyla Zana and as far as we know she has no relationship with trade.’ LC Waikiki plan to keep up their barrage of disclaimers via newspapers and TV statements and have undertaken a series of public surveys to measure the effect these are having. They are also preparing to take legal action as soon as a perpetrator is found. Although the company are quick to state that the fall in retail sales is general throughout the sector the coincidence seems to be too strong. 

Mısırlı warns that what happened to them could happen to anybody. Unfortunately for LCW lightning has struck three times in the same place as Assistant General Manager Murat Mısırlı says; ‘İt’s not the first time we’ve been the victim of lies, we came out of the others with our heads held high but this has to be the worst assertion yet’ . They experienced a similar reversal of fortunes last year when the French Parliament passed a motion declaring the Armenian massacres of the early twentieth century a genocide. Again using the internet as the vehicle of delivery the message was spread that LCW was a French firm and the company found themselves embroiled in the nationwide public boycott of French goods. At that time they placed ads in the national press explaining their ownership structure and broke the boycott. A few years before a series of chain emails accused them of supporting İslamic reactionaries. 

İn reality TEMA plough back 10% of their profits into social wlelfare programs and during this year’s Ramazan Bayram they provided school uniforms for 60,000 deprived children. They have also given 150YTL monthly scholarships to 2300 students and 250,000YTL to the Mehmetçik Charity (that supports the families of deceased soldiers). Despite these good works they seem plagued by smear campaigns and Leyla Zana may prove to be their femme fatale.